The contagion moves furtively. It appears at times as a biological virus that inflames the body and turns it against the self, and at others, as a toxic transmission of hatred that threatens to cleave the body politic, turning the self against the world by fracturing robust histories of syncretism and pluralism. We’ve come to know this through our lived experience of medical, metaphysical, and ecological catastrophes of recent years, unfolding alongside the resurgence of supremacist and xenophobic movements across the world, including in India and Aotearoa New Zealand.
It is within this context that Pallavi Paul’s exhibition, To Be in Someone Else’s Prayer, seeks a reparative arrangement. Refraining from sensationalism and the aestheticisation of suffering, the exhibition creates a tender space of listening. It responds to the fragility of the body—human, political, and architectural—by imagining the exhibition as a chadar: a fabric laid over the graves of loved ones and patron saints that offers refuge and healing.
Chadar in Hindi translates as a covering or cloak. It carries immense emotional, spiritual, and physical weight in South Asian imagery. Far more than a piece of cloth, it is a fabric of human vulnerability, dignity, and intimacy. A chadar may shelter a frail body, lovers seeking sanctuary, the silence of a mortuary, the fragrant prayers at a shrine, the exhaustion of a worker’s day, or the defiant dreams of a protester’s makeshift bed. It is less a singular object than an offering that assumes many material and ceremonial forms. It may appear as a finely woven woollen shawl, a canopy of flowers above a wedding or funeral procession, or an intricately embroidered textile, perfumed with rose petals and draped over the tomb of a beloved saint.
To be wrapped or gathered under a chadar is to be in love’s healing embrace. Throughout Pallavi Paul’s exhibition, this material of reverence, tenderness, and devotion appears in several ways: as the seaweed canopy of Offering to a Moving Shore (2026), as embroidered translucent fabrics in Amulet 1–5 (2025), and as the trimmings of chadars collected from Sufi shrines, incorporated into the artist’s new watercolour paintings. For bodies that have experienced humiliation and destruction, the chadar becomes an infrastructure of dignity, hope, and repair. Imagined as a chadar, the exhibition seeks to create a comforting expanse where acts of surrender and letting go become possible, while making room to dream of worlds more just and hospitable than the one we inhabit.
The tenderness the exhibition seeks to cultivate is inseparable from its commitment to inquiry. Pallavi Paul’s practice interrogates how truth is produced and contested in public life. At times, the exhibition follows forensic logic, incorporating scientific and archival imagery, from microscopic imagery of the zoonotic Nipah virus to the photographic evidence of the destruction of masjids, dargahs, and graveyards. Her multimedia practice treats documentary not just as an image or a film, but as a material ecosystem, a web of relationships, a framework for thinking, and an embodied sensory experience.
The exhibition also attunes us to the vitality of multispecies and microbial life, where the flight of gannets, the wandering of a peacock, and the care of a dog for her pup become part of a shared ecology of attention. Across embroidered textiles, watercolours, text works, and moving images, the exhibition gathers forms of beauty not as consolation but as a way of staying with the world's fractures. Here, tenderness and love emerge not despite disappointment, destruction, and death, but through sustained encounters with them. The exhibition foregrounds our shared vulnerability, a condition that demands enduring forms of care, both material and spiritual. In moments of uncertainty and trial, we come to depend not only on the care of systems and institutions, but also on the generosity of being held in another’s prayers.
Pallavi Paul’s work was first presented to audiences in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2019 as part of the exhibition How to Live Together (St Paul St Gallery, AUT). In February 2026, the artist undertook a four-week research residency in Aotearoa, supported by Satellites and Te Tuhi. This exhibition features new work stemming from the artist’s research trip, including the watercolour painting How It Feels to Be in Someone Else’s Prayer (2026), which gives the exhibition its title.
The exhibition is commissioned by Te Tuhi in partnership with Satellites.
Public Programme
→ Exhibition opening event
Saturday 8 August 2026, 2pm – 3pm
→ Fearless Listening: a workshop with Pallavi Paul
Sunday 9 August 2026, 10am – 12pm
→ Artist Floor Talk with Pallavi Paul
Saturday 15 August 2026, 10am – 11am
→ Unwounding: a workshop with Prashan Casinader-Olds
Saturday 29 August 2026, 2pm – 4pm
→ Writing Workshop with Terri Te Tau and Richard von Sturmer
Saturday 19 September 2026, 10am – 12pm
→ Book Fair (featuring Nowhere Bookstore)
Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 October 2026
About the artist
Pallavi Paul is a New Delhi-based visual artist and film scholar. She received her PhD in Film Studies from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her work has been exhibited at the Sharjah Biennale (2025), where she received the Sharjah Biennial Prize.
Her institutional solo exhibitions include Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (2024, 2023) and Berlinale Forum Expanded (2022) at SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin. She has also participated in group exhibitions at the the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2025–26), Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2023, 2022); New Alphabet School, HKW Berlin (2021, 2020); Colomboscope, Sri Lanka (2021); the Rubin Museum, New York (2019); Beirut Art Centre, Lebanon (2018); AV Festival, New Castle (2018, 2016); Contour Biennale, Mechelen (2017); and Tate Modern, London (2013).
About the curator
Balamohan Shingade is a writer, curator, and researcher living in Titirangi. He has published essays on contemporary art, Indigenous-settler relations, authoritarian populism, and the Indian diaspora in Aotearoa New Zealand. He is an occasional singer of Hindustani music, and with Erena Shingade, he runs Spoor Books—an independent publisher, a community platform, and an online bookstore featuring titles from India and beyond.